Anyone with experience with both Ubuntu Unity and Mint want to chime in on the desktop experience? I can't say I was loving the Unity interface. It just seemed awkward. I have been hearing a lot about Mint though and have been considering installing it in a VM as a replacement for my Ubuntu installation.

Anyone with experience with both Ubuntu Unity and Mint want to chime in on the desktop experience? I can't say I was loving the Unity interface. It just seemed awkward. I have been hearing a lot about Mint though and have been considering installing it in a VM as a replacement for my Ubuntu installation.

I use Mint for the computer hooked up to our TV. It's a six-year old (min) yard sale computer so there's occasionally some creaking from the hardware, but it works great for browsing the internet and fooling around. Add Steam, and it can play a few (not many) games. I will probably switch to Mint as my primary partition if more games start coming to Linux.

NOTE: It was only the release candidate that was posted, the final revision is still to come. From reading the issues page, it appears there are some known issues with the RC that will be resolved in the final.

Anyone with experience with both Ubuntu Unity and Mint want to chime in on the desktop experience? I can't say I was loving the Unity interface. It just seemed awkward. I have been hearing a lot about Mint though and have been considering installing it in a VM as a replacement for my Ubuntu installation.

I installed Cinnamon on my Ubuntu LTS and have been very happy with it. I haven't gone for a full Mint install yet, and with this one only supported until January I think I'll wait a while longer. Ubuntu plus Cinnamon is fine for now.

Linux Mint is an excellent alternative to Ubuntu, but until they have official support for distro upgrades, I'll pass. I just cannot afford to do a full reinstall on my work laptop at each release to get the new things and lose a lot of time just reconfiguring everything again.

Question: How "small" is the generic install? I have a tiny SSD (16GB) for which this is a good candidate for a random Linux box, but I'd love to know just how small the install is. At the moment I've been using Lubuntu, which seems to be ~2 GB (+2GB /swap). Mint 14 seemed to be about 5 GB. The computer in question is sort of a utility machine... I use GRUB to boot a few ISOs with hard drive utilities on 'em, an XP partition for a few super old utilities I couldn't get to work in a VM, and having a Linux desktop is nice as well. I fiddled with Arch but the experience was not very beginner friendly...

The times that I've used Mint previously I have been incredibly impressed. It's a friendly user experience, unlike Unity. Plus, the skills I learned when I was fiddling with Ubuntu transferred over very nicely. For anyone thinking about Mint, I can definitely recommend it.

I run Linux Mint 13 on a desktop and a laptop and it's been a lot nicer than when I used Ubuntu 10.04 and 12.04.

Mostly it comes down to Linux Mint just doesn't get in my way and lets me use my computers like I want to.

Things about Ubuntu Unity that made me switch were:Poor handling of multiple windows belonging to the same programDock bugs with missing iconsAlt-tab not showing all the windowsHuge issues with multiple monitorsThe global menu / window menu split made it hard to find things

Some of those had alternative shortcuts and configuration options (sometimes the only option was to uninstall things) to make them a little less painful but I still spent too much time fighting the interface to get stuff done.

So... what is the difference between Cinamon and MATE? I still haven't really been able to figure that out...

MATE is simply a fork of GNOME 2, with updates applied as needed and some new features. Cinnamon is a UI built ontop of the GNOME 3 code base, offering the latest features of GNOME but with a more traditional GUI than the new GNOME shell.

Is there a comparison of MATE and Cinnamon to aid the decision making process?

Also - no distribution upgrades? That seems rather lame, is that correct?

MATE, as a GNOME 2 fork, is considered better for users wanting stability and compatability. Cinnamon, as a new from-scratch project, is a little rougher around the edges, but offers more modern GUI features (but without radically altering the established window-driven GUI experience).

And I believe that in the Mint forum, people will describe how to do a distro upgrade, but the Mint team's recommendation has always been to reinstall.

So... what is the difference between Cinamon and MATE? I still haven't really been able to figure that out...

Mate is a direct fork of Gnome 2, and retains most of Gnome 2's strengths and weaknesses. You don't need a compositing window manager to run it and it's lighter than Cinnamon, so more suitable for older machines.

Cinnamon is a shell built on top of Gnome 3 and takes advantage of the newer underlying technology. It has nice effects out of the box and (IMHO) is more attractive than Mate.

In my opinion, unless you have a compelling reason to use Mate (an old computer, no 3D graphics capability, just can't duplicate some essential Gnome 2 functionality), it's always better to look forward than look back, so Cinnamon is the better choice for most users.

I quite like the MATE desktop; it makes sense, it lays things out in logical ways, and finding things is quite easy.

My major objection to it is that it doesn't deal very well with big fonts; I have a 30" screen, so I run much larger fonts than the UI is really designed for. As a consequence, things tend to look pretty awkward, particularly in the control panel. But I can live with it.... it's better than Unity, and it's way better than current GNOME, which incites absolute, seething hatred in me every time I use it. (And, stupidly, I keep trying it again, because people keep saying "oh, it's not so bad". Yes, yes it IS that bad, and it's not going to get better. )

What's particularly galling about GNOME 3 is that they completely fouled up the desktop in favor of tablets, and then nobody really uses it on tablets. So all they did was screw over their entire existing user base, to go chase phantom users that never showed up.

Is there a comparison of MATE and Cinnamon to aid the decision making process?

Also - no distribution upgrades? That seems rather lame, is that correct?

MATE - essentially a fork of GNOME2 with some tweaks and improvementsCinnamon - not quite a recreation,but a .. hrrm,a functionally identical UI similar to GNOME2,but built ontop of GNOME Shell

As for the second - you can do an in-place upgrade,but it's not as polished as it's done in 'buntu.. If you feel like it,though - you can still do 'em - for more info,check out http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/62 ,but replace the stuff from the pastebin with the appropriate version names (olivia and raring.. I think )

Edit: lol,by the time I fetched my afternoon coffee and write this up A LOT of people beat me to the punch Edit2: My bad,the dev name for 13.04 was 'raring',not roaring.. Anyway,time to see how horribly wrong my secondary Mint install will go after trying an in-place upgrade

Anyone with experience with both Ubuntu Unity and Mint want to chime in on the desktop experience?

I've installed every version on my secondary machine since Linux Mint 11 because I liked a clean slate each time. Recently I decided to switch to Ubuntu because I don't have the time anymore to reformat the drive and install a newer release every six months. I miss Cinnamon and I plan to install it on Ubuntu. Even though I installed Ubuntu on our office computers and made our staff use it, I don't use it often so Unity is still confusing for me.

In my opinion, unless you have a compelling reason to use Mate (an old computer, no 3D graphics capability, just can't duplicate some essential Gnome 2 functionality), it's always better to look forward than look back, so Cinnamon is the better choice for most users.

Thanks.

I'm getting my new devbox at work in the next week or two, and I'd like to avoid Ubuntu this time around. And dist upgrades aren't a major issue for me as they're fairly rare. I'm guessing Mint 15 will be fully released by then and it seems it will be worth giving it a go.

Anyone with experience with both Ubuntu Unity and Mint want to chime in on the desktop experience? I can't say I was loving the Unity interface. It just seemed awkward. I have been hearing a lot about Mint though and have been considering installing it in a VM as a replacement for my Ubuntu installation.

After a person learns Unity it's a breeze to use. I quite like it. Mint with Mate is a basic Gnome2 fork. Cinnamon is what Mint did with Gnome3. I have tried all three and I like Unity the best. It is somewhat more polished and easier for me. Mint is nice for people coming from Windows and has the traditional Windows feel. All in all it comes down to user preference.

Anyone with experience with both Ubuntu Unity and Mint want to chime in on the desktop experience?

I've installed every version on my secondary machine since Linux Mint 11 because I liked a clean slate each time. Recently I decided to switch to Ubuntu because I don't have the time anymore to reformat the drive and install a newer release every six months. I miss Cinnamon and I plan to install it on Ubuntu. Even though I installed Ubuntu on our office computers and made our staff use it, I don't use it often so Unity is still confusing for me.

I did fail to mention that you can install Cinnamon on Ubuntu. It does work well.

Does anybody know if this installs onto a software (mdadm) RAID? The old rule was you needed the debian (console graphics) installer to install onto a RAID array. The screenshots I have seen of the latest debian stable show a new X-based (or at least it looks like it) installer, so I'm hoping they either use this or mint or ubuntu added the RAID code to the installer (it was said to be a big headache for any adding mdadm capability to the old one, so my guess would be to just use the debian installer).

I've also noted that the last ubuntu with an alternate installer was the 12.04 LTS edition (thus it is what I use), and ubuntu hasn't made one since. Maybe they have already switched to the new debian installer?

Even though I installed Ubuntu on our office computers and made our staff use it, I don't use it often so Unity is still confusing for me.

I wasn't that cruel to my Linux users, they got Debian 7 + Cinnamon instead of Gnome 3 or Ubuntu + Unity. I'm a reasonably satisfied Gnome 3 (with a few add-ons) user, but I was motivated to learn the UI. I don't see a compelling reason to expect others to.

Does anybody know if this installs onto a software (mdadm) RAID? The old rule was you needed the debian (console graphics) installer to install onto a RAID array. The screenshots I have seen of the latest debian stable show a new X-based (or at least it looks like it) installer, so I'm hoping they either use this or mint or ubuntu added the RAID code to the installer (it was said to be a big headache for any adding mdadm capability to the old one, so my guess would be to just use the debian installer).

I've also noted that the last ubuntu with an alternate installer was the 12.04 LTS edition (thus it is what I use), and ubuntu hasn't made one since. Maybe they have already switched to the new debian installer?

Ubuntu hasn't used the Debian installer in years. The Debian graphical installer is just a shell over the old, reliable text-based installer.

Been on the 15 RC since Tuesday and I love it. There are however some rather nasty bugs easily within the user's path on the front-end that have yet to be squashed, but the final-stable version will be out in just two weeks. Cinnamon 1.8.2 is the real star in this revision, not to mention the cool new MDM 1.2 Log-in screen that can be themed, I immediately changed to away from the flashy cloud-stuff.

I quite like the MATE desktop; it makes sense, it lays things out in logical ways, and finding things is quite easy.

My major objection to it is that it doesn't deal very well with big fonts; I have a 30" screen, so I run much larger fonts than the UI is really designed for. As a consequence, things tend to look pretty awkward, particularly in the control panel. But I can live with it.... it's better than Unity, and it's way better than current GNOME, which incites absolute, seething hatred in me every time I use it. (And, stupidly, I keep trying it again, because people keep saying "oh, it's not so bad". Yes, yes it IS that bad, and it's not going to get better. )

What's particularly galling about GNOME 3 is that they completely fouled up the desktop in favor of tablets, and then nobody really uses it on tablets. So all they did was screw over their entire existing user base, to go chase phantom users that never showed up.

Not correct. You are giving your personal perspective of Gnome3 and Unity. Don't say that is the way everyone feels because that would be false also. I've heard people say that people who use Mate are stuck in the pass. Is that true? Of course not. I've heard that people who hate Gnome3 and Unity hate it because they are too dumb to learn. Is that true? Of course not. You can give your opinion about different environments and it's fine for you to do so, but you shouldn't state them as facts, because they are not. Did you know that Cinnamon is built on Gnome3? And yes the users will show up. http://distrowatch.com/7857

I love Linux Mint after being disappointed with Unity interface. It works like a dream inside VirtualBox, to the point I am thinking of promoting it to a dual-boot mode. Been eagerly awaiting new release, so this is welcome news!

Anyone with experience with both Ubuntu Unity and Mint want to chime in on the desktop experience? I can't say I was loving the Unity interface. It just seemed awkward. I have been hearing a lot about Mint though and have been considering installing it in a VM as a replacement for my Ubuntu installation.

Unity is the whole reason I changed to Mint. Unity is brain damaged.

The Cinnamon desktop is pretty good and getting better. It operates the way a desktop should operate. You can also get XFCE and LXDE environments. I find LXDE to have a lot of gaps but it is lightweight. I have it running on an Asus Transformer. XFCE is pretty good. I have that and Cinnamon installed and can switch between them at login time.

I started with Mint Debian edition but the rolling release schedule means that (a) you're forever being pestered to update something and (b) the updates frequently break the whole system. In a year, I had to wipe the computer and reinstall the entire OS from scratch to fix it. If you have a need to be on the bleeding edge, that's the way to go and just keep lots of backups. But if you just want to get work done, stick with plain Mint and either Cinnamon, MATE or XFCE desktops.

What's particularly galling about GNOME 3 is that they completely fouled up the desktop in favor of tablets, and then nobody really uses it on tablets. So all they did was screw over their entire existing user base, to go chase phantom users that never showed up.

Not correct. You are giving your personal perspective of Gnome3 and Unity. Don't say that is the way everyone feels because that would be false also. I've heard people say that people who use Mate are stuck in the pass. Is that true? Of course not. I've heard that people who hate Gnome3 and Unity hate it because they are too dumb to learn. Is that true? Of course not. You can give your opinion about different environments and it's fine for you to do so, but you shouldn't state them as facts, because they are not. Did you know that Cinnamon is built on Gnome3? And yes the users will show up. http://distrowatch.com/7857

gee, this sounds an awful lot like what people (including me) are saying happened to windows with win8 and metro. i haven't had the (dis)pleasure of using unity just yet, but having seen it being used, and hearing all these reviews, i am not eager to try it out myself. i put mint on my wife's machine back at version 8 or 9 and she actually liked it... right up until she wanted to actually install some crap yahoo games intended to run in xp. she'd probably be fine with it now since almost everything is browser-based. heck, ever since i got her an android tablet, she almost never uses her laptop anymore.

I've been a linux user since Corel Linux in the 90's. Used Red Hat (before Fedora) PCLinuxOS, Mandrake, Ubuntu, etc. Since I switched to Linux Mint a few years ago I have been super happy. I use MATE because I am past the time in my life where I liked to mess around with my computers. Now I just want them to work and have the OS get out of the way so I can use the apps I need. Nothing I have tried has beat Linux Mint. You DO NOT need to install the next new version every 6 months. If the version you currently have installed does everything you need, keep it until they stop sending updates. If you use it for a while and like it, consider donating. I have donated twice in the last few years. Encourages them to keep doing great work!

Anyone with experience with both Ubuntu Unity and Mint want to chime in on the desktop experience? I can't say I was loving the Unity interface. It just seemed awkward. I have been hearing a lot about Mint though and have been considering installing it in a VM as a replacement for my Ubuntu installation.

I've been using Ubuntu since 2008 on our computers at home. Even my wife, a die hard Windows user picked it up and eventually preferred it. When Ubuntu did the switch to Unity, I really liked it and have been using it since but my wife not so much so her computer is now a Mint computer. When my folks had had enough of Windows and wanted to switch a year ago, I thought they might prefer Mint because it was more like Windows, they didn't, but they love Unity. Moral of the story; try both each has its pluses and minuses and see which one you like best. For a while we had triple boot computers; Windows, Ubuntu, and Mint, eventually we found which one we chose most and got rid of the rest.

Anyone with experience with both Ubuntu Unity and Mint want to chime in on the desktop experience? I can't say I was loving the Unity interface. It just seemed awkward. I have been hearing a lot about Mint though and have been considering installing it in a VM as a replacement for my Ubuntu installation.

Cinnamon rocks. I have gotten used to unity, but my second linux machine runs mint.

Linux Mint is an excellent alternative to Ubuntu, but until they have official support for distro upgrades, I'll pass. I just cannot afford to do a full reinstall on my work laptop at each release to get the new things and lose a lot of time just reconfiguring everything again.

this has been my issue with linux in general. But mint in particular BECAUSE I like it so much. I really enjoy the relative ease of Mint. and generaly I don't bother doing an upgrade to a new mint for a long time. in fact prior to the 14 release my previous was mint 9 (and that only because I wanted to try it and had time, I was using a previous version and was happy).BUT on a laptop... I want some of the changes that you can only get with a new version increment or at least easily get, and I won't really want to go through the whole configuration process all over again each and every time. If it was a work laptop, even less.my time is valuable to me, even if not to anybody else. I really don't want to go through the trouble to reconfigure everything every time, 2 times a year or even once a year. once every 5 years.. yea I might, despite my dislike to do so.What I would like to see is something that windows is finally really trying to accomplish, same profile on every machine I use, so I don't have to configure everything all over again. This won't help with setting up wifi or network access etc.. but it would reduce my desire to just keep my 17 year old machine (ok I exaggerate, its 7 yrs old). I want this to work seamlessly across versions, even major versions of the OS.Which brings me to the next point about GUI changes, when introducing a new way to interact with your hardware/software, please put a LOT of work on trying to import configurations from an old or even different OS/version/GUI. (hell I would PAY for an app that did that for me, across linux/bsd using my windows or old Linux as the starting point). even if it does a setup screen for it, where you have to pick a or b decisions until it finishes doing the setup would be good. I know the amount of work that would involve. That is the point.(btw I realize that this is similar to the first request bit about the configuration of the OS itself).BTW, there should be a way to import EASILY all the wifi/network/printer/etc configurations through a USB database file about your original profile/computer/os.good god. THAT would be an app to see and use